2004

Detroit Inkslingers

 May 28-31

Cobo Hall

After finishing up with the 2004 spring jagerneister music tour, we got to be home for about a week before heading up north to Detroit for the Inkslingers Tattoo Expo. On May 26, we grabbed a rental car and began the 21 hour drive from Austin. We arrived in Detroit on the 27th and settled into our hotel - the pontchartrain. Physically, the hotel was nice enough and it was conveniently located across the street from the convention hall where the event was taking place. However, that is where the convenience ended. Not to start out on a down note but if there was anything bad about the trip it was the hotel. The event was fanatastic as were all the people present, but the hotel was mostly aggravation in the form of very poor service and attitudes.

This was the view from our room on the 20th floor. The rooftop is Cobo Hall, you can see our rental car (red rendezvous above the gap in the awnings) if you look closely. On the other side of the water is Canada. It was a nice view but given the poor operation of the elevators I would have preferred something lower - since I ended walking the stairs a couple times.  

As is becoming more and more common, I was not the only person with facial tattooing at the show.

   

The room in Cobo hall was huge - and it needed to be. In addition to several artists and vendors the event hosted a wrestling exhibition (including Zach Gowen formerly of the WWE - the one legged wrestler), a custom car show, several bands and rap acts, daily tattoo competitions, fetish demos, pyros the firebreather, Iwascured performing flesh pulls, and, of course, my show.

I always have fun performing my show but I got a few extra perk over the course of the event by also serving as a guest judge for the tattoo competition and dong the talk (MC'ing) for Iwascured's flesh pulls. Despite being told not to suspend, they managed to amaze the crowd each night by topping themselves with bigger and badder pulls each night.

 

After the event was over we headed east to albany, NY where I picked up a load of Scott's stuff to take back to Texas for his impending move to Austin.